NEWS
Regents debate tuition waiver
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by Michael Gendall
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents is considering adding Wisconsin to a list of states including Minnesota and North Carolina, whose public university systems would waive tuition outright for Hurricane Katrina victims, but they must await dialogue with the state Legislature.
The regents, at their meeting in West Bend, Wis., Friday, passed a resolution stating they shall not bill students who have sustained losses as a result of the hurricane for the balance of tuition at this time.
"We fully recognize the impact this disaster has had on the lives of university students on the Gulf Coast," UW System President Kevin Reilly said at the meeting. "Allowing those victims to continue their education with little or no tuition cost is a way we can truly help."
According to Regent Charles Pruitt, system administrators will now consult with legislative leaders and attempt to agree on a tuition figure for the hurricane victims.
"Based on those consultations, they'll either come to the full board or if it's not necessary there won't be a special meeting — they'll just set [a tuition rate]," Pruitt said, adding he's in favor of doing "whatever we can do" for the refugees.
In order to separate the refugees from the originally enrolled UW students, the regents established a class of students known as the "Hurricane Katrina Victims," consisting of students who had previously attended an institution shut down in the disaster area but now plan to enroll at a UW institution as a special student for the fall semester.
As part of Friday's resolution, these students have been granted a non-resident tuition waiver, meaning that non-Wisconsin residents affected by the hurricane will pay, at most, the in-state tuition of $5,618, amounting to a $14,000 discount.
"What the board did was they designated a class of students called Hurricane Katrina Victims," UW System Director of Communications Doug Bradley noted. "They needed to have a certain class that they could then grant a non-resident tuition waver to."
Bradley said the regents directed Reilly and Regent President David Walsh to confer "as quickly as possible" with legislative leadership on whether or not the regents can waive tuition for the hurricane victims this fall.
As the regents and legislators debate whether to allow hurricane victims free access to the UW System, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said as of Friday only 38 of the 98 students admitted to his campus have enrolled, with many awaiting official word on the cost.
"These students have nothing," Wiley said at the regents meeting. "They're scared to death that down the road they will get a tuition bill they won't be able to afford."
UW Colleges & UW-Extension
As part of Reilly's report to the Board of Regents, UW Colleges Interim Chancellor Margaret Cleek and UW-Extension Interim Chancellor Marv Van Kekerix made a presentation to the regents updating their integration process.
According to Walsh, Reilly's creativity inspired the movement toward greater collaboration between the institutions after Reilly took office last year.
"We have been criticized for [employing] too many administrators," Walsh said. "[So] Kevin Reilly comes in [and] proposes to combine the administrations of college and extension together."
Walsh said the system will eventually appoint one permanent chancellor, assuming the duties of Interim Chancellors Cleek and Van Kekerix over their respective programs.
"The combination of our two institutions will preserve our unique missions," Cleek said at Friday's meeting. Walsh agreed, and noted that although the regents are all supportive of Reilly's plan, they are not necessarily looking to combine the institutions' missions.
"We're just trying to slim it down so we keep that tuition down," he said. "We're very concerned about the cost of education."
Tuition throughout the system has rapidly increased in recent years, and Walsh said they need to actively cut costs in order to keep the figure low.
Walsh said the regents strive to maintain UW-Madison's reputation as one of a very small number of great public universities with low tuition.
"The rest of [those universities] are pretty expensive," Walsh said.
